Quotes

[about working with Sherilyn Fenn on Gilmore Girls (2000)] I love Sherilyn so much and I don't care [to cast her for two different roles on "Gilmore Girls"]. One thing about the show is I just want the best people. I've just been looking constantly for a time to work with Sherilyn, and I'm getting very old and I could just get hit by a truck at any minute. I just simply can't put it off that long, so I'd just rather get her in and have her part of my world.

The plan on [The Return of Jezebel James (2008)] is the same as [Gilmore Girls (2000)]--to write, produce, do everything. It's love. I don't believe that bullshit, "If you love it, let it go". If you love it, stay there and make sure no one else fucks it up.

[on working conditions in Hollywood] If we based everything in Hollywood on who was a nice guy, holy moly, we would have no movies. No actors would work. This is not an industry that is ruled by kindness and generosity.

I think the claustrophobic, too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen scenario is what's killed the sitcom. My husband [frequent Gilmore Girls (2000) writer and director Daniel Palladino] and I consider ourselves sitcom refugees. We'd love to return to sitcom, but I don't know where you go to do it. You simply cannot do a sitcom by committee. It will not work. You've got to have one or two clean, creative voices in charge, and there's got to be some faith by the studio and network in those people to make the right choices. When you're sitting in a room with 20 people giving you notes, there's no way what you're going to get is going to be any good. It's impossible. At the very least, it will be mediocre, because you can only compromise so much before you damage the goods.

I think every writer has got to direct. If you don't direct, you can't protect your work. The only way to ensure that it's going to be as close as possible to what you put down on paper--and what you see and hear in your head--is to do it yourself.

I think music on television is just uniformly dreadful. It is mundane, it says nothing. They use it to say, "Here's a funny moment!" like everyone's retarded, you know? It's not an extension of the drama, it's distraction. It's like, "I'll distract you, so you won't know how shitty the show is."

[on Hollywood trends] I always find it funny that people take the wrong message from any success. Like Bridesmaids (2011) comes out and people go, "Oh, women are funny, they shit in the street. Let's make sure now everybody shits in the street!" Not like, "OK, but it's a well-constructed script with very good characters and the core of it is actually about female relationships," nothing about that. They take the one shitting in the street thing and then for months you're going to have every actress that you love shitting in the street. Until they realize, "Oh, it doesn't work that way, I guess, so now women aren't funny." No, no, no! It's not that women aren't funny, it's just that all of them don't have to shit in the street!

Many people in the business will refer to a woman who did something or acted a certain as "crazy." I then say, "Yyou have to define what 'crazy' is." To me, crazy is not someone who has a creative vision and will fight for it.